to think "everyone did it back then" isn't an excuse?

[taaay]

This comes up quite a lot whenever people discuss things that were commonplace in the past.

People say husbands beating their wives was normal, children were routinely smacked or caned, racism was widespread, homophobia was accepted, and so on. Often the defence is that people were simply products of their time and didn't know any better.

But were they really?

Not that long ago, police often treated violence against wives as a private domestic matter and were reluctant to get involved. Marital rape wasn't even recognised in law. Racist attitudes were commonplace and children could be hit in ways that would be completely unacceptable today.

Yet even then there were people saying these things were wrong. Women campaigned against domestic violence, people fought against racism and discrimination, and some parents chose not to hit their children despite it being socially accepted.

I sometimes wonder whether too much emphasis is placed on "that's just how things were". Were people really incapable of thinking for themselves? Did they lack an internal moral compass? If your neighbour was regularly beating his wife, or a child was being routinely thrashed, did it genuinely not occur to people that this was cruel and wrong simply because society tolerated it?

I understand that social norms are powerful and that people are influenced by the world around them. But surely "everyone else was doing it" can explain behaviour without excusing it.

That should be it also means on reflection that they didn’t think it was OK

I'm struggling to understand what you are asking for. Domestic violence is hugely widespread today so why are you thinking of it as a thing of the past. Racism and homophobia still exist. Why are you wanting to hold people from the past to account for their behaviour, why not focus on people now? And what do you mean by hold to account? We have the courts and the law but as you must know it's incredibly difficult to get a conviction for dv or rape and racism and homophobia are not crimes. There are horrendous things happening today that people are perfectly fine with and normalise because they go along with the crowd such as sterilising children. That's the way life works - groups and societies decide what they accept and what they frown upon. There will always be outliers but they will also only ever be judged by the zeitgeist of the times so what you want to hold someone to account for from the past will just be judged by the mores of today and what you are asking for now might be judged as unacceptable by someone in the future. There are time limits on, and procedures for, holding people to account for their behaviours and for very good reason.

You have the answer though. We all participate to some degree in a society with questionable morals. There are things we absolutely wouldn’t do under any circumstances, things we avoid doing and things we tuck away in a quiet place and do because for whatever reason we choose to. People in the past are no different.

Many people make choices that aren’t fully consistent with their value base, for varied and complex reasons, it’s fine to say you wouldn’t excuse yourself by saying “it was of its time” but what would you say when X years down the line what is now a common practice becomes deeply problematic? What would you consider to be an acceptable response?

I think you're conflating two different things.

If someone says "everyone was doing it" as a simple historical observation, then fine. That's just a statement about what was common.

The problem is that it's often presented as though it answers the moral question as well.

For example, if a future generation asked why so little was done about modern slavery and someone replied, "everyone was doing it", I'd regard that as an incomplete answer. It tells me something about how widespread the behaviour was, but it tells me nothing about whether people recognised a problem,
whether they objected to it, whether they felt powerless, whether they benefited from it, or whether they simply didn't care.

Also, this isn't about claiming some moral high ground. I don't think I'm morally superior to people in the past.

What I do think is that human beings have always had some capacity to reflect, question and make judgements. That's why even within the same society people often reached different conclusions.

It does answer the moral question if society’s mores and morals were different back then, @taaay.

I don’t think anyone can answer for “people” though. To take modern slavery, there will be people who think it’s abhorrent, some will see it as a necessary evil, and some will profit from it, others won’t even have thought about the humanitarian impact of their Temu haul. Some will see it as a good thing because how else would people in poor countries make money.

All of those views coexist in society at the same time because people have different ways of understanding the world and different moral priorities. Your mistake is thinking that something that is objectively wrong in your eyes must also be objectively wrong in the eyes of others, and that people owe you an explanation for why they think the way they do.

I don't think it does.

It explains why people thought differently. It doesn't automatically answer whether those beliefs or behaviours were right.

If changing social morals automatically settled the question, then nobody could ever criticise anything in their own society because whatever was accepted at the time would, by definition, be morally correct.

The problem with that is that people have always disagreed with the morals of their own era. There were people opposing slavery while slavery was legal. There were people arguing against child labour while it was widespread. There were people objecting to racism, domestic violence and homophobia long before public opinion shifted.

Those people clearly didn't believe that society's current morals settled the issue.

To me, "the morals were different back then" explains why something was accepted. It doesn't prove it was right. If it did, every social reformer in history would have been wrong until the moment society caught up with them. That doesn't make much sense.

And of course for some people the answer will be every was doing it, it was common practice, I really didn’t give it any thought.

It doesn't prove it was right

It doesn't prove it was right by your modern morals and mores. It may have been right by theirs.

I was allowed to write with my left hand through my childhood. That would have been 'wrong' to earlier generations.

I swear, drink alcohol and don't go to church (or shul or mosque or temple). To people of other times, that would have put me very much Ch in the 'wrong'.

Morals and what is good or right or just change. Societies evolve or regress. People are still just people, imperfect and doing their best with what they can.

Being left-handed, drinking alcohol or not attending a place of worship are largely matters of custom, belief or personal behaviour. Whether someone approves of them is not really comparable to questions about how people treat other human beings.

Also, saying something was considered right at the time doesn't tell us whether it actually was right. Plenty of things have been widely accepted throughout history that we now recognise caused harm. The fact that they were normal explains them; it doesn't settle the moral question.

I also think "people were doing their best" risks becoming a catch-all defence. Some people undoubtedly were. Others weren't. Human beings have always been capable of kindness, cruelty, courage, cowardice, empathy and indifference. That's true now and it was true then.

What I struggle with is the idea that because morals change, we can't make any judgments about the past. If that's the case, we can't admire people from the past either. We can't praise those who opposed injustice because, by that logic, they were simply products of a different set of influences.

The existence of people who challenged prevailing attitudes shows that alternative ways of thinking were available at the time. They may not have been the majority view, but they existed. That's why I don't think "it was normal then" is quite the end of the discussion that some posters seem to think it is.

You are overthinking everything horribly. There is no answer to your question that you find acceptable because it is a question that is impossible to answer. There is no one factor that determines the behaviour of "people" It is futile to keep thinking that there must be....human brains are complex and their workings barely understood....

Yes, Op is continuously repeating the same question, without appearing to understand the answers lots of people have given in trying to explain.

It's all quite simple @taaay I think we can all agree:

1. There are some basic matters of right and wrong, although many things considered right or wrong are social decisions.
2. Sometimes society cannot implement the 'better' choice eg So many people were punished for minor wrongdoings by death because there were few or no prisons.
3. Laws were made by a powerful minority, usually in their own interests.
4. Commercial interests often trumped matters of right and wrong, but these benefitted the few.
5. Ordinary people's opinions tend not to figure or have left many traces. That doesn't mean they didn't have opinions.
6. It takes an exceptional person/situation to stand up against the law/majority opinion.

I do wish you would think about these comments, @taay. So far as I can see, they fully answer your question.
There;s no point simply repeating your point about right and wrong.

i don’t think the moral question can ever be settled though. There are relatively few things that most people would argue are objectively wrong, and even those can have circumstances that render the action in question the lesser of two evils. Unless you fully know the individual circumstances surrounding the action and intent, you’ll struggle to assess the rightness or wrongness of the action because circumstances can make a real difference. You might argue there were less harmful choices the person could have made but there may have been factors that influenced the decision that you’re simply not aware of, particularly thinking of historic wrongs that took place in a very different context to the one we live in now.

I have thought about those comments. The fact I don't agree that they fully answer the question doesn't mean I haven't understood them.

Most of what you've written is fairly uncontroversial. Of course laws were often made by powerful minorities. Of course ordinary people had opinions. Of course it can be difficult to go against majority opinion.

Where I disagree is the claim that this completely answers why people respond differently to the same moral issue.

If it takes an exceptional person to stand against the majority, then we're still left with the question of why some people become those exceptional people and others don't. That's the part I've been asking about all along.

I also think some posters keep treating explanation as though it ends the discussion. To me it starts it.

Saying people were influenced by social norms, economic pressures and the limits of their era is true. The question is whether that's the whole story. I don't think it is.

And respectfully, telling someone they haven't understood because they haven't changed their mind isn't really an argument. People can understand the same information and still reach different conclusions.

What do you think is the whole story? You clearly have some kind of answer in mind that isn’t covered by the many, many responses you’ve had - so why do you think different people come to different choices, why do you think we don’t all act in accordance with the same moral compass?

I would like to know this too!

Why some people strayed from the norm and became “exceptional “?

Firstly because they had the capacity(financial , intellectual etc)to become so.
Because they reached that point of being fed up or angry and said “enough is enough”.
Because they had the strength of their convictions, just for “the other side”.
Because they had something to gain, something worth fighting for.

That’s at a basic level.

If it takes an exceptional person to stand against the majority, then we're still left with the question of why some people become those exceptional people and others don't. That's the part I've been asking about all along.

Are you expecting there to be one answer that links every person in history who did something exceptional?

Plus, in general terms, for any exceptional person I've ever heard of, there's always a background exceptional situation, social financial etcetera. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes not.
Also, you can look at it statistically: I think it's called a distribution curve, where 66 percent are average, 17 percent above and 17 percent below average.
So , based on statistics alone, there will always be outliers and this is pointed out by @ChalkOutlines first point.
So, I'm scratching my head to see where the difficulty lies.
I'm wondering whether there is another issue driving this for you @taaay as a pp asked?

The past is another country means that in order to understand the people who lived there, you need to learn about their beliefs, customs, influences etc. We can't simply project our own on to them and expect to gain any meaningful insight into their lives. It's not usually used to end a discussion IMO, but as an admission that you don't have the knowledge needed to go further with it

Well that's not looking likely is it?

Again you’ve answered your own question if you ask someone about something that went on / goes on ie modern slavery / smacking their children/ domestic violence or whatever and their answer to you is everyone did it you say that’s an incomplete answer.
You have a point do you follow up with OK but what are your views on the question you have a conversation about it and then move on they might have views you agree with or views you might not but you can’t just lump everyone together just because they make a generic statement.
They might even tell you they don’t care or they don’t even think about what your asking so until you know their reasoning as to why these things happen you can’t say one group of people are more moral than others
As I and countless other people on this thread have said before we are all unique and there are many different reasons why people think and act the way they do.

In 70 years, I think there'll be a Mumsnet thread of a similar ilk about eating UPFs (feeding kids UPF) / poisoning our planet and the likes. Do we not have a moral compass?

Although, from our view point this obviously is lightyears away from hitting a child. I do see your point, though! I think it's not about having a moral compass, more about being socially conditioned to put up and shut up with horrific behaviour (from men).

Taaay You are always going to find people who will question things that happen in the past and in the present, some may decide to campaign fight challenge these wrongs these people are to be commended
They are the trailblazers for hopefully a better future some are born this way some because of circumstances take action because of these circumstances
I’m sure no one if they had a choice would want to fight in a war
There is also people who commit these wrongs murder, rape abuse children beat their wife/ husband/child
Then there are people who for many complex reasons don’t do anything they may know and don’t care, they may care but are unable to do anything proactive so they do nothing .There may come a time when circumstances force them to take action who knows
There is no right or wrong answer to what your trying to solve

I think that's part of the answer, but not the whole answer.

For a start, plenty of people who challenged accepted norms had very little financial power, status or education. History is full of ordinary workers, poor people and marginalised groups who pushed for change despite having very little to gain and a great deal to lose.

I'm also not convinced everything comes down to self-interest. Some people fight for causes that don't benefit them personally at all. Sometimes they actually make their own lives harder by doing so.

The phrase "they had the capacity" also risks becoming a bit circular. Why did they challenge the norm? Because they had the capacity. How do we know they had the capacity? Because they challenged the norm.

What interests me is why two people with similar backgrounds, similar opportunities and similar pressures can reach very different conclusions. At some point individual judgement, values and choices have to enter the picture.

Otherwise we're back to people being almost entirely shaped by circumstances, which doesn't sit comfortably with the fact that people from the same families, communities and social classes often ended up on opposite sides of major moral issues.

I think you've actually made my point.

You've listed lots of different reasons why people respond differently to injustice: personality, circumstances, courage, self-interest, fear, indifference, compassion and personal experience.

That's exactly why I don't think "they were a product of their time" is a complete answer.

Where I disagree is with the idea that there is no right or wrong answer. There may not be a single answer, but that doesn't mean all explanations are equally convincing.

If some people challenge injustice, some actively support it, some quietly oppose it and some do nothing, then individual choices clearly matter alongside social circumstances.

Also, I think saying people "may be unable to do anything" and saying people "do nothing" are two very different things. Lack of power can explain inaction. Indifference can explain inaction. Fear can explain inaction. Those aren't the same thing, and I don't think they should all be treated as morally equivalent.

The reason I've kept returning to this point is because many posters seem to want one explanation that covers everyone. I don't think there is one. Human beings are more complicated than that. Some people rise above the norms of their time, some embrace them and most sit somewhere in between.